“Of course not. It’ll be the dance of the century. Look, I’ve brought the flower vases. If you tell me where to put them, I’ll bring them into the house and then get out of your way.”
“You are a dear. If you go into the kitchen, you’ll find Katy and some friends of hers. They’re making silver stars, or streamers, or something, to decorate the nightclub. She’ll show you where to put them.”
“If there’s anything else you’re needing…”
But Verena’s attention was already wandering. “If I think of anything, I’ll call you…” She had too much on her mind. “Mr Abberley! I’ve just remembered. There’s something else I want to ask you…”
Virginia drove home. By the time she reached Balnaid again, it was nearly two o’clock. She was beginning to feel ravenously hungry, and decided that before she did anything else, she must have something to eat. A cold beef sandwich, perhaps, some biscuits and cheese, and a cup of coffee. She parked the Subaru at the back door and walked indoors and into the kitchen.
All thoughts of food instantly flew out of her head. She stopped dead, her empty stomach contracting in a spasm of shock and outrage.
For Lottie was there. Waiting. Sitting at the kitchen table. She did not look abashed in the very least, but smiled as though Virginia had asked her to drop by, and Lottie, graciously, had taken up the invitation.
“What are you doing here?” This time Virginia made no effort to keep the irritation out of her voice. She was startled but she was also enraged. “What do you want?”
“Just waiting for you. And I wanted a wee word.”
“You have no right to walk into my house.”
“You should learn to lock your doors.”
Across the kitchen table, they faced each other.
“How long have you been here?”
“Ooh, about half an hour.” Where else had she been? What had she been doing? Had she been snooping around Virginia’s house, gone upstairs, opened cupboards, opened drawers, touched Virginia’s clothes? “I thought you’d not be long, leaving the doors open like that. ’Course, the dogs barked, but I soon quieted them down. They can always tell a friend.”
A friend.
“I think that you should go at once, Lottie. And please don’t ever come back unless you are asked.”
“Oh, Miss Hoity-Toity, is it? Am I not good enough for the likes of you?”
“Please go.”
“I’ll go in my own time when I’ve said what I have to say.”
“You have nothing to say to me.”
“But that’s where you’re wrong, Mrs Edmund Aird. I have plenty to say to you. Up to high doh you were, when I met you out for a walk on the bridge. Didn’t like what I had to say, did you? I could tell. I’m not stupid.”
“You were telling lies.”
“And why should I tell lies? I have no reason to tell lies because the truth is black enough. ‘Whore’ was what I called Pandora Blair, and you buttoned up your lips as though I’d said a dirty word, pretending to be so pure yourself, and high and mighty.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to see no evil and fornicating,” Lottie droned, and she sounded like a Wee Free minister promising his congregation Eternal Damnation. “The vileness of men and women. Lustful practices…”
Infuriated, Virginia cut her short. “You’re talking drivel.”
“Oh, drivel, is it?” Lottie became herself again. “And is it drivel that when your man’s away, and you’re rid of your wee boy, you bring your fancy men home with you and take them to your bed?” It was impossible. She was making it up. Letting her crazy twisted imagination feast on her own carnal fantasies. “Aha, I thought that would silence you. Mrs Edmund Aird indeed. You’re no better than a street-walker.”
Virginia took hold of the edge of the table. She said, and kept her voice quite cold and quite calm, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“And who’s lying now, may I ask?” Lottie, with her hands clasped in her lap, leaned forward, her strange eyes fixed on Virginia’s face. Her skin was waxy as a candle and the faint shadow of her moustache darkened her upper lip. “I was there, Mrs Edmund Aird.” Her voice dropped, and now she spoke in the hushed tones of a person telling a ghost story, and making it as scary as possible. “I was outside your house when you came home last night. I saw you coming back. I saw you, switching on all the lights and making your way up the stairs with your fancy man. I saw you at the bedroom window, leaning out like a pair of lovers and whispering between the two of you. I saw you draw the curtains, and shut yourselves away, with your lust and your adultery.”
“You had no right to be in my garden. Just as you have no right to be in my house. It’s called trespass, and if I wanted I could call the police.”
“The police.” Lottie gave a cackle of laughter. “Fat lot of good they are. And wouldn’t they be interested to know what goes on when Mr Aird is in America. Missing him, were you? Thinking of him and Pandora? Told you about them, didn’t I? Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Makes you wonder who you can trust.”
“I want you to go now, Lottie.”
“And he’s not going to be pleased when he knows what’s been going on.”
“Go. Now.”
“One thing’s for certain. You’re no better than the rest of them, and don’t try to convince me you’re not guilty, because your face gives you away…”
Virginia finally lost her cool. Through clenched teeth she screamed at Lottie, “GET OUT!” She flung out an arm, pointing at the open door. “Get out and stay out and never come back, you creeping old bag.”
Lottie was silenced. She did not budge. Across the table, she stared at Virginia, her eyes hot with hatred. Virginia, dreading what might happen next, stood, tense as strung wire. If Lottie made one move to touch her, she would turn the heavy table on top of the old lunatic and squash her flat as a beetle. But, far from becoming physically violent, Lottie’s face assumed an expression of deep complacency. The glitter went out of her eyes. She had said her piece, achieved what she’d set out to do. Without hurry, in her own time, she got to her feet and neatly buttoned up her cardigan. “Well,” she announced, “I’ll be off then. Bye-bye, doggies, nice to have met you.”
Virginia watched her go. Lottie, on her high heels, tapping jauntily across the kitchen. At the open door she paused to look back. “That’s been very nice. No doubt I’ll see you around.”
And then she was gone, quietly closing the door behind her.
Violet, in her own little kitchen at Pennyburn, stood, aproned, at the table, and iced her birthday cake. Edie had made the cake, which was large and had three tiers, but Violet had been left to do the decorating. She had made chocolate-butter icing and with this had stuck the three tiers together. Now she was engaged in spreading what remained of the sticky goo over the outside of the cake. She was not an expert at cake-decorating and, when it was completed, it had a fairly rough-and-ready appearance, more like a newly ploughed field than anything else, but by the time she had stuck a few brightly coloured Smarties into the icing and added the single candle that was all she allowed herself, it would be quite festive enough.
She stood back to eye the finished cake, licking a few gobs of icing off her fingers. At that moment she heard a car coming up the hill and then turning into her own driveway. She looked up and out of the window and saw that her visitor was Virginia, and was pleased. Virginia was on her own, and Violet was always gratified when her daughter-in-law unexpectedly dropped in, uninvited, because it meant that she wanted to come. And today was specially important, because they would have time to sit down and talk, and Violet would be able to hear all about Henry.
She went to wash her hands. Heard the front door open and close.
“Vi!”
“I’m in the kitchen.” She dried her hands, reached to untie her apron.
“Vi!”
Violet tossed her apron aside and went out into the hall. Her daughter-in-law stood
there at the foot of the stairs, and it was immediately obvious to Violet that something was very wrong. Virginia was as pale as paper, and her brilliant eyes were hard and bright, as though they burned with unshed tears.
She was filled with apprehension. “My dear. What is it?”
“I have to see you, Vi.” Her voice was controlled, but there was unsteadiness there. She was not far from weeping. “I have to talk.”
“But of course. Come along. Come and sit down…” She put her arm around Virginia and led her into the sitting room. “There. Sit down. Be quiet for a moment. There’s nothing to disturb us.” Virginia sank into Vi’s deep armchair, laid her head back on the cushion, closed her lovely eyes, and then, almost immediately, opened them again.
She said, “Henry was right. Lottie Carstairs is evil. She can’t stay. She can’t stay with Edie. She must go away again.”
Vi lowered herself into her own wide-lapped fireside chair. “Virginia, what has happened?”
Virginia said, “I’m frightened.”
“That she will do Edie some harm?”
“Not Edie. Me.”
“Tell me.”
“I…I don’t quite know how to start.”
“Everything, from the beginning.”
Her quiet tones had effect. Virginia gathered herself, visibly making some effort to keep control and stay sensible and objective. She sat up, smoothing back her hair, pressing her fingers to her cheeks as though she had already wept and was wiping tears away.
She said, “I’ve never liked her. Just as none of us has ever liked her, or been happy with the fact that she’s living with Edie. But, like the rest of us, I told myself that she was harmless.”
Violet remembered her own reservations about Lottie. And the frisson of panic she had experienced, sitting with Lottie by the river in Relkirk, with Lottie’s hand closed around her wrist, the fingers strong and steely as a vice.
“But now you believe that we were all wrong?”
“The day before I took Henry to school…Monday…I took a walk with the dogs. I went to Dermot’s to buy something for Katy, and then on and over the west bridge. Lottie appeared out of nowhere. She’d been following me. She told me that you all knew — all of you — you and Archie and Isobel and Edie. She said that you knew.”
Violet thought, oh, dear God. She said, “Knew what, Virginia?”
“Knew that Edmund and Pandora Blair had been in love with each other. Had been lovers.”
“And how did Lottie know this?”
“Because she was working at Croy at the time of Archie and Isobel’s wedding. There was a dance that night, wasn’t there? She said that she followed them upstairs in the middle of the party, and listened at Pandora’s bedroom door. She said that Edmund was married and had a child, but that made no difference, because he was in love with Pandora. She said that everybody knew because it was so blatantly obvious. She said that they are still in love with each other, and that is why Pandora has come back.”
It was even worse than Violet had dreaded, and for once in her life she found herself at a total loss for words. What could one say? What could one do to comfort? How to salvage a single grain of comfort from those muddy depths of scandal, stirred up by a madwoman who had nothing to do with her pathetic life but make trouble?
Across the small space that divided them, her eyes met Virginia’s. And Virginia’s were filled with pleading, because all she wanted was for Violet to assure her that the whole fabrication was a pack of lies.
Violet sighed. She said, with total inadequacy, “Oh dear.”
“It’s true then. And you did know.”
“No, Virginia, we didn’t know. We all had a pretty shrewd idea, but we didn’t know, and we never spoke about it to each other, and we all went on behaving as though it had never happened.”
“But why?” It was a cry of despair. “Why did you all shut me out? I’m married to Edmund. I’m his wife. How did you imagine that I wouldn’t find out? And from that dreadful woman, of all people. It’s a sort of betrayal, as though you didn’t trust me. As though you thought I was some sort of innocent child, not old enough nor mature enough to deal with the truth.”
“Virginia, how could we tell you? We didn’t even know for certain. We simply suspected, and being the people that we are, we brushed it all away under the carpet and hoped that it would stay there. She was eighteen, and Edmund had known her since she was a child. But he’d been in London, and he’d married and had Alexa, and he hadn’t seen Pandora for years. And then he came north for Archie’s wedding, and there she was again. Not a child any longer but the most ravishing, wicked, delicious creature you’ve ever seen in your life. And I have an idea that she had always been in love with Edmund. When they met again, it was like an explosion of fireworks. We all saw the fireworks but we turned away and did not watch. There was nothing we could do except hope that the fireworks would burn themselves out. And it wasn’t as though there was any chance of it going on for ever. Edmund had commitments in London. His wife, his child, his job. When the wedding was over, he went away, back to his own responsibilities.”
“Did he go willingly?”
Violet shrugged. “With Edmund it’s impossible to know. But I remember seeing him off, in his car, from Balnaid, and saying goodbye, and very nearly saying something more. Something ridiculous. Like ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘Time is a great healer’ or ‘You’ll forget Pandora’, but at the end of the day I lost my nerve and I never said anything.”
“And Pandora?”
“She went into a sort of teenage decline. Tears, sulks, misery. Her mother confided in me, and was in the greatest distress about it all, but truly, Virginia, what could we say? What could any of us do? I suggested sending Pandora away for a little…to do some sort of a course, or perhaps go to Paris or to Switzerland. At eighteen she was still very young in many ways, and some worthwhile project…learning a language or working with children…might have diverted her misery. Given her the chance to meet other young people and the chance to get over Edmund. But I’m afraid she’d always been most dreadfully spoiled, and in a strange way her mother was frightened of Pandora’s tantrums. Whether anything was ever said, I don’t know. All I do know is that Pandora simply hung around Croy for a month or two, making everybody’s lives utterly miserable, and the next thing was she’d run off with that dreadful Harald Hogg, rich as Croesus and old enough to be her father. And that, tragically enough, was the end of Pandora.”
“Until now.”
“Yes. Until now.”
“Were you concerned when you knew she was coming back?”
“Yes. A little.”
“Do you think they are still in love with each other?”
“Virginia, Edmund loves you.” Virginia said nothing to this. Violet frowned. “You surely know that.”
“There are so many different sorts of love. And sometimes, when I really need it, Edmund doesn’t seem to have it to give.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He took Henry away from me. He said I smothered him. He said I only wanted to keep Henry because he was some sort of a possession, a toy I wanted to go on playing with. I begged and pleaded and finally had that dreadful row with Edmund, but nothing made any difference. It was like arguing with a brick wall. Brick walls don’t love, Vi. That isn’t love.”
“I shouldn’t say this, but I am on your side as far as Henry is concerned. But he is Edmund’s child, and I truly believe that Edmund is doing what he thinks best for Henry.”
“And then this week he swanned off to New York, just when I really needed him here. Taking Henry to Templehall and leaving the poor little scrap was the worst thing I’ve ever had to do in the whole of my life.”
“Yes,” said Vi inadequately. “Yes, I know.” They fell silent. Violet considered the miserable situation, went back in her mind over all they had been saying. And then realised that there was a small discrepancy. She said, “Virginia, all this happened on Monday. But y
ou came to see me today. Has something else occurred?”
“Oh.” Virginia bit her lip. “Yes. Yes, it has.”
“Lottie again?” Violet scarcely dared to ask.
“Yes. Lottie. You see…Vi, you remember last Sunday, having lunch at Croy and all of us teasing Isobel about her house guest, the Sad American? Well, on my way back from Templehall, I stopped off at the King’s Hotel to go to the loo, and I met him there. And I know him. I know him quite well. He’s called Conrad Tucker and we used to play tennis together in Leesport, about twelve years ago.”
This was about the most cheerful thing Violet had been told since Virginia appeared. She said, “But how very nice.”
“Anyway, we had dinner together, and then it seemed silly, his staying in Relkirk when he was coming to Croy the next day, so he came back to Balnaid with me, and stayed there. I took him up to Croy this morning and left him with Archie. And then I went to Corriehill with some flower vases for Verena. And then I came home and I found Lottie in the kitchen.”
“In the kitchen at Balnaid?”
“Yes. She was waiting for me. She told me…that last night she’d been at Balnaid, standing in the garden, in the dark and the rain, when Conrad and I came back. She watched us. Through the windows. None of the curtains were drawn. She watched us going upstairs…” Virginia met Violet’s horrified gaze, opened her mouth and shut it again. Finally, she said, “She called me a whore. Called Conrad a fancy man. Raved on about lust and fornication…”
“She is obsessed.”
“She must go, or she will tell Edmund.” Before Violet’s eyes, Virginia all at once went to pieces, her face crumpling like a child’s, tears brimming into her blue eyes and overflowing, streaming down her cheeks. “I can’t bear any more, Vi. I can’t bear everything being so horrible. She’s like a witch, and she hates me so much…I don’t know why she hates me…”
She groped for a handkerchief but could not find one, so Violet handed over her own, lawn and lace-trimmed and little use for damming such a flood of misery.
“She is jealous of you. Jealous of all normal happiness…As for telling Edmund, he will know, as we all know, that it is nothing but a pack of lies.”